


build me a city and call it jerusalem

by belatrix



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Minor Violence, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-27 00:28:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5026669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belatrix/pseuds/belatrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One night, Lucifer's hand reaches up, up, higher than it's ever been before, rests against the rise of his cheekbone. Sam wants to push him away, but those dark blue eyes are looking at him with so much wonder, and the hand cupping his cheek is too tender, and he just—</p><p>[or: Sam will not say <em>Yes</em>, but Lucifer might.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	build me a city and call it jerusalem

 

 

 _Give me bullet power. Give me power over angels._  
_Even when you're standing up you look like you're lying down, but will you let me kiss your neck, baby?_  
— Richard Siken

* * *

 

 

 

He stands, still as though carved out of glass splinters, eyes closed and heart open. The ocean's spreading out around, an endless expanse of azure blue lapping at the shore. He can feel the sand dissolve between his toes, the wind beat against his skin, and he opens his eyes to stare at the sea, the endless sea.

He watches the waves crashing into each other, twisting and chasing, like dark flaps of shredded skin. If they were red, they'd look just like piles of flesh after a knife has run through them. Sam feels weightless, so weightless, like he might fly if he just spread his arms wide and let the salty air carry him. He remembers, vividly, a patch of Jess' white nightgown hanging loose, dipped in blood, torn and singed at the seams. The sea foam looks so much like a cut, burnt piece of soft soiled fabric that he wonders, briefly, if he's just imagining things.

Somewhere behind him, several steps away, another man is watching him watching the ocean.

Desperation makes you empty, light, otherworldly; pain makes you a wild, wild beast. Sam is caught somewhere in the middle, and the weight of the man's unwavering gaze on the back of his head feels a little too familiar, a little too comfortable. Sam focuses on the memory of flames swallowing the ceiling whole, a pale face frozen in luminous death.

The sea hums, and the sound becomes blurred. There's a hand on his shoulder. He smiles.

 

 

The motel bed smells like old sweat and foam rubber and those pine-scented fresheners that for some reason seem to be everywhere, and Sam keeps his gaze on the ceiling. The paint is cracked and peeling, a depressing shade of gray that was once white, probably. His eyes follow the length of one winding crevice, his mind tries to think of nothing but the twists and turns of the forlorn pattern of time passing above.

Lucifer leans against one wall, his vessel's hands in his pockets, head tilted slightly to the side. "Sam," he says, low and soft. It sounds like a knife slicing through the stillness of the room. " _Sam_. This isn't getting you anywhere. You know it."

Sam breathes out, and keeps staring up, up, up. His fingers clench into the sheets.

 

 

More often than not, it's easy to forget that Lucifer is an angel.

Deep in the most practical corner of his mind, Sam knows this is, really, a stupid thought; he has seen angels lie and he has seen angels kill. He has seen them swathed in blood and carnage and power, and he has witnessed them hate and destroy. But they're still _angels_. And Sam cannot just forget everything he's known about them since he was a child with stars in his eyes, can't look past the _all-consuming_ _goodness_ and _light_ and _God's creatures_ ideals that seem to be a package deal with them.

Sam looks at Lucifer, and he sees none of these things. But he knows —oh, he _knows_ — that the archangel once was the culmination of all things beautiful, light and grace and power pure but unbridled. Sam looks at Lucifer, and all he sees is a pair of old, old eyes that look at him like they _know_. Sam looks at Lucifer, and all he sees is the world crashing and burning and falling.

 _Get out_ , he thinks desperately. _Get out, get out, get out, get_ —

 

 

 

"Sam."

Lucifer's fingers are light, tap-tap-tapping away a gentle rhythm on Sam's knee. It feels more than a caress than anything else, and something inside Sam is coiling and clenching, he wants to scream and claw at Lucifer's hand until the vessel's fingers bleed and tear at the seams.

" _Sam_!"

Dean's face is inches away from his brother's, his gaze frantic. Sam opens his eyes, and realizes with something like a jolt that Dean is gripping his shoulders, shaking him, shouting at him, a feral quality to it all. He coughs, and pushes his brother's desperate hands away, brushes limp, drenched strands of hair from his face.

"I'm fine, Dean," he says on an exhaled breath. His knee is prickling from the touch of phantom fingers. His head hurts. "Really, I'm—"

"You were screaming, Sam," his brother says, and it sounds like a plea and a threat and an accusation, all rolled into one and wrapped with a bright red bow. Dean's eyes look more tired than wild, now, more broken than tired.

Sam shakes his head. "Just a nightmare," he says, turning away. He can hear his own heart hammering against the cage of his chest. "It's— _God_ , Dean, it was just a nightmare."

Somewhere inside his head, he hears a half-hearted laugh.

 

 

It's dark. It's too dark. The starless night is closing in around him like a vice, and Lucifer's hands are tracing constellations on his skin, splaying against the bare patches of flesh like liquid moonlight.

"I will give you the _world_ , Sam. This is how it was always supposed to be."

"I don't want the world. I want you to _leave_."

 

 

Sam is tired. He's — _his eyelids are so heavy and the bed is only a few steps away and please he wants to sleep_ — sitting by the open window, letting the blinding sunlight wash over his face. He notices blackbirds on the sky above, little dark dots circling around the endless expanse of bone-dry blue.

The door opens and closes with a loud creak that Sam barely registers, and then there's his brother's heavy, cautious footfalls across the wooden floorboards. Too familiar, and yet too foreign.

"I brought back some food, Sammy," Dean says in that now-permanently hollow voice of his. Sam doesn't turn around. "Burgers. And pancakes. You—" there's a small pause, the sound of a sharp exhale, "—you really need to eat something, Sam."

 _You really need to say yes, Sam_.

"I'm fine. I'm just fine." Sam keeps looking out the window. He stays there for a long, long time. He hears the birds calling.

 

 

Lucifer's gaze is weighted with sincerity and promise, it seems, as he shifts a little closer and places a gentle hand on Sam's shoulder. "I don't want to ruin the world," he says, and it sounds like the mere idea that he might want exactly that is outrageous. "I want to _fix_ it, Sam."

He refuses to meet Lucifer's eyes. Things are always easier when he doesn't. "If you wanted to _fix_ the world, you'd have left it alone," he says, voice harsh and empty.

Lucifer just shakes his head.

 

 

He controls the flinch, but not well enough, when Lucifer reaches out with a gentle hand and brushes a loose strand of sweat-drenched hair behind Sam's ear, like the protagonist from some cheap Harlequin novel might.

"You know how this will end, Sam."

 _Wake up_ , he tells himself. _Wake up, wake up, wake up_.

"It's only one word. One tiny little word, and we'll be _everything_."

He knows it's a lie, knows this as surely as he knows that the sky is blue and that blood is red. Lucifer keeps claiming that he only speaks truths, and suddenly it makes Sam want to laugh, because, really, this is all one big fucking slow play intended to twist his brain until he gives unwilling consent, and isn't this just wonderful?

Wake up. Wake up.

Wake.

 _Up_.

 

 

There are days when he thinks he's insane. Or that, maybe, he's always been insane. Angels and demons and devils and the Apocalypse, oh my. Any psychiatrist would have a field day with one Sam Winchester.

 _The family business_ , he and his brother always called it — half-affectionately, half-desperately, always depending on the day and the monster and the pain, but those days are over. Now, the looming threat of the end of the world is all there is, and Sam is caught in the middle, and all he wants is out, out, out.

Dean's gaze is heavy with weariness and concern and something like frustration, and it makes Sam's skin crawl. It makes him want to curl in on himself —weakweak _weak_ — and hide away and never have to meet his brother's eyes again, but the thought of a neverending nothingness without him suddenly seems even worse.

They don't play as much music in the car, anymore. The silences between the brothers are cut with words unspoken, with Dean fixing his gaze firmly on the road ahead, day in day out, with voiceless litanies. Dean becomes a blur of alcohol and fake nonchalance and an impossibly tired protector behind the whole façade, and Sam feels sick. Sam feels, not for the first time, like a too heavy to carry burden, like a makeshift bomb that is going to go off, eventually, like he's leaving everyone around him to play red-wire-blue-wire until everything explodes. Still, when they make a pit stop on their way to the next rundown motel, Dean looks at him like he's getting used to it all, asks him if he wants anything, tells him to "Get some rest, Sammy".

 _You look like shit_ , is what Dean does not say, but he hears it anyway.

 _I feel like shit_ , would be the honest response, and he knows Dean knows.

He thinks that, maybe, his brother's eyes hold a glint of accusation.

 

 

"If you say yes," Lucifer is saying, low and soft and lilting, "I can make sure that your brother will not be harmed. Not by anyone. I can do that, Sam."

He blinks. He stares back. "Fuck you."

 

 

"Sam, _Sam_. You were made for me. This is what you were born for."

"I will not say it. I will _never_ say yes."

 

 

His dreams are always of Lucifer. This doesn't mean anything more or anything less than exactly that; Sam sleeps, and Lucifer will be there, waiting, always waiting, and Sam will wake up again with weariness greater than the one before he'd closed his eyes.

He wonders if this will ever stop. It doesn't seem likely. Lucifer has become a constant in his life, now, almost a routine.

There are days when it's almost unbearable. He feels so tired, always so damn _tired_ , and Dean sometimes looks scared, looks at his younger brother with a fear that he cannot hide behind a flighty attitude. Words come out of Sam's mouth that otherwise wouldn't — sharp, panicked, harsh, hurtful, because he can't remember the last time he slept properly and it's all so _much_. He just wants to close his eyes and dream of peace, of comfort, of normalcy.

Lucifer sits at the foot of the bed, the mattress dipping lower under his weight, and Sam resolutely refuses to look at him. He keeps his back to the devil and he feels feather-light fingers brushing against his skin and his clothes; curious touches along the lines of his shoulders, the incline of his collarbone, the pattern of his ribcage. Gentle, exploring hands on his knees, cupping his elbows, running down his arms so faintly that he can barely feel them.

Sam knows, too clearly, that he should be disgusted. He probably is. But the motions are a soothing thing, almost like a silent lullaby, almost like Lucifer feels genuine curiosity at it all, and Sam allows himself to either ignore him or get lost in a sea of guilt and unwanted comfort.

One night, Lucifer's hand reaches up, up, higher than it's ever been before, rests against the rise of his cheekbone. Sam wants to push him away, but those dark blue eyes are looking at him with so much _wonder_ , and the hand cupping his cheek is too tender, and he just—

 

 

"There is no point in this stubborn resistance of yours, Sam, there simply _isn't_. You're denying your fate, you're denying your true purpose, you're—"

"No. My answer is no."

 

 

In one of his dreams, just once, Lucifer takes him to the ocean. The sun is a bright, scalding thing stitched into the sky above, and it burns Sam's skin like benediction. He eases his feet into the water; lets waves lap at his ankles, and for a moment, thinks of burying his head under the sea, holding it there. Lucifer's fingers close around his wrist.

"It's beautiful," Sam says quietly, lets his eyes fall shut against the onslaught of golden light and the call of merry seagulls. "I won't say yes."

"Sam—"

"I won't. I will never say yes."

 

 

The demons attack him in a flurry of teeth and limbs and eyes black as sin, and Sam knows he is going to die. Every cell in his body screams, _fight_. _Fight or run_. But there's too much blood and too much pain and Dean isn't here, so he just accepts the fact that his life has reached its end.

Perhaps it's long overdue. Perhaps it's a good thing.

Still, it _hurts_. Sam screams, Sam tries to fight, and he can't think anymore—

 

 

"I will never let anyone hurt you."

Sam's breaths come out ragged, gasping things. He feels like his skin is on fire. The pair of eyes looking at him is an endless black-blue storm, fire and lightning and a wild, wild sea. He gasps and sputters and tries to sit up, and Lucifer watches him, head tilted to the side, gaze furious and Sam notices that Lucifer's sleeves are singed, something black and awful splattered over his hands.

"You killed them," he says on an exhaled breath, his head still spinning. "The demons."

Lucifer frowns a little. "They tried to kill you, Sam," he says as if speaking to a child. "How could I let them go unpunished?"

Sam holds very, very still. Everything hurts, _and Lucifer just saved his life and he doesn't know what to think oh God it hurts_ —

"I can heal you," says the archangel. "I can heal you", says the devil, and Sam lets his head fall back down against the pillow with a muffled thud. "I can protect you."

"I don't need protection from you."

A sharp, cutting laugh. "It seems like you do," Lucifer says, and shifts a little closer. His eyes are thunder and broken shards of light, and Sam wants nothing more than to look away. "I told you. I will never let _anyone_ hurt you."

Sam swallows. And then he notices that he has stopped bleeding. He wants to cry, and he wants to scream, and he wants to kick and punch and claw at the body looming over him, but all he manages is, "Thank you."

Lucifer smiles, and it looks so much like a genuine, affectionate thing that this time Sam does look away.

 

 

Dean is more silent than Sam's ever seen him, all hard edges and sharpened corners and a faraway gaze. Their current hunt is dragging on far too long; a rogue demon, dead girls, decomposing bodies, blazing fires, one dingy motel after another, and they're still not getting anywhere. The friction between the brothers is already apparent — sharp words and frustrated silences and cutting glares, and Sam isn't sure he can do this anymore.

When he sleeps that night, the room is cold, impossibly cold, so much that he can almost see his breath materialize in crystals before him. Lucifer is sitting on the bed, on the side that Sam has almost come to think of as his, an inhuman stillness about him that makes Sam more uneasy than it ever has before.

"I can help you, you know," Lucifer tells him, and still he does not move a single muscle. His gaze is a piercing, burning thing, and Sam buries his face in the mattress, wants the world to go away. "This little demon your brother is so very determined to catch but has so spectacularly failed to trace. I could tell you where it is. How to kill it."

A short, sharp chuckle leaves his mouth, muffled by the sheets. "Thanks, but no thanks."

He feels so tired, so impossibly tired, and Lucifer lets out a soft sigh. "Oh, Sam. I am merely trying to make things easier for you and your brother. It pains me, it truly does, to see you both so… lost."

"Of _course_." He turns on his side, wills himself to stare at the empty white wall ahead. The cold is biting at him, burrowing into his bones, and he thinks he might be shivering. "I can't imagine your help comes for free."

He feels the mattress shift and curl, and suddenly he's alone on the bed. He hears Lucifer's soft footfalls against the wooden floorboards, imagines the slow, graceful, simmering movement of his that somehow always manages to translate even through Nick's borrowed, fragile human body.

"Go away," he mutters, half-heartedly. To his surprise, Lucifer does.

 

 

There are nights when Sam dreams about saying _yes_. He is never sure if the dreams are Lucifer's doing or his own mind at work, but he supposes it does not matter. He dreams of fire, of blood and smoke and carnage, of power rushing through his veins, singing pure and unstoppable under his skin. He dreams of the sky being ripped in half, stars falling in fiery, destructive glory, the sun and the moon crashing into each other, seas turning red and the earth splitting open.

(He dreams of dark blue eyes and light and rage and thunder shining behind them, and he dreams of them turning into his own eyes.)

Those nights are the worst, but sometimes, they're the best.

 

 

Lucifer's touches feel more real, lately, not as feather-light and cautious as before. Exploring hands running the length of Sam's bones, large palms smooth over the planes of his back.

"I know you, Sam," the devil says in his ear, a voice like fraying velvet. Sam suppresses the shiver, closes his eyes. "I know you better than you know yourself."

 

 

He can't remember the last time he slept properly. Weariness cuts at him like a blade, it becomes a bloody curl into his flesh that will never heal, leaves him on edge and trembling and unraveling, faster and surer than any words ever could. Even when he sleeps, he dreams of not being able to sleep.

Lucifer is perched on the window, fingers laced together and eyes on Sam, always on Sam. He is still and silent in that eerie, otherworldly way that sometimes makes Sam's skin crawl, that he has seen in Cas but never like this, never so intense. Lucifer is watching, waiting, always _waiting_.

And Sam is tired of it. And he's sick of it.

He throws the sheets off himself, scrambles out of the bed in a flurry of thrashing limbs until he's standing in the middle of the room, feet bare on the cool floor, shoulders almost-trembling. Lucifer just tilts his head, a small furrow in his brow as if he's confused.

"You're… furious," he observes, and Sam wants to _scream_. "Did something—"

"Shut up." Sam's chest is heaving, the air between them crackling with silent violence and an icy thunderstorm of unbridled rage, and he can hear the thud-thud-thudding of his heart, like a trapped animal inside his ribcage. "Shut up. _Shut the fuck up_."

Lucifer's mouth turns down a little at the corner, a mockery of hurt, and all Sam wants is to punch that expression off Lucifer's borrowed face, to claw that flashing light out of his eyes. He feels as though the walls around him are crumbling, shadows pulled into planes, the ceiling shivering. Sam wants to _hurt_ him.

"I've never hurt you, Sam," Lucifer says, soft and low and almost wounded, and _God get out of my head get out get out get out_ — "And I've never lied to you. I've never done anything but wait for you to see the truth of your existence, to accept your purpose—"

"Why me?" Sam shouts, taking a step forward, and Lucifer almost flinches back in what is surely _not_ an instinctive reaction. "Why me, _why me_? Why are you doing this? What the fuck do you _want_?"

Lucifer stands as well, eyes crackling with spilling lighting meeting Sam's own. _Lightbringer_ , Sam thinks, and imagines blood and smoke and ruins. "I've told you, a hundred times," he says, and it's a rough, quietly furious thing. "I want this to end. I want to fix things."

"You're the one ruining everything," Sam cries, desperately. He feels like he might fall into a heap on the floor and start screaming and sobbing at the injustice of it all. "Why are you —why do you have to—" he trails off, blood pumping in his ears. He runs a shaking hand over his face. "You're wrong," he says, "You're so goddamn _wrong_."

 

 

The next time, Lucifer is silent. He sits far away, on the other corner of the room, back against the cold gray wall, and Sam catches himself watching him, waiting for an explosion. It never comes.

 

 

For the first time in months, Sam sleeps and dreams of a vast, vast emptiness. Lucifer is nowhere to be found, and in all his broken, shattered routine of having the devil ruling over his sleep, Sam looks for him.

At first, it's a frantic thing. At first, he thinks —he's _sure_ — that something is terribly wrong. He searches the endless expanse of snow-cold world he's found himself in, looks for a dark blond head and ancient blue eyes, maybe a silhouette limned in hellfire. He hears his own breath in the silence, in out in out in out, and he's alone.

 

 

Lucifer returns quietly, all liquid movements and cool, tranquil silence in the middle of the darkened motel room. He doesn't come near the bed; his shoulders slump, just a little, against the window frame and gossamer curtains sway around him with the gentle breeze as he assumes that angelic, monstrous stillness, as if he were an inanimate object surrounded by the sounds of the late night.

But his eyes —oh, his eyes, they're always gleaming, burning things.

Sam sits, legs apart, hands folded between his knees. Damp strands of unkempt hair are falling in front of his eyes, splitting the world in jagged halves. There's something unnamed, something low and humming, caught in the space between him and Lucifer. Something coiling and clenching in the air, making Sam's skin prickle and something metallic, something desperately vile, catch at the back of his throat.

"Sam—" he hears, that voice like sin and honey and promise, and it's all it takes. Sam is _furious_ , has been living in anger and pain and desperation for so long, so fucking long, and he snaps.

Before he knows it, he's crossed the meager space separating him from Lucifer and suddenly he's shoving and punching and pushing like the world's about to end —and isn't it funny, because it _is_ — , like his life depends on it, like all the words he cannot speak are rushing through his hands in an explosive stream of hatred, not only for Lucifer but for himself as well.

He hits, and feels a rib underneath his fist crack, a sickening sound following the feeling of shattered bone. Lucifer doesn't make a sound as his vessel is shoved back, back, into the wall, and Sam punches again, pauses for a moment just to watch the bright red bruise bloom across an unshaven cheek. Dark blue eyes are looking up at him, impossibly calm, something vast and endless swimming in their depths, and Sam lets out a noise like a whimper and a scream. He hits again.

Again.

 _Again_.

And this is not _right_. He closes a hand around Lucifer's throat, pushes him further into the wall, puts as much pressure in his grip as he can, and still there's not a single reaction. Lucifer keeps looking up at him, swallows a little as Sam tightens his fingers around his throat, mouth half-open on a silent noise he will not make.

Sam's shoulders shake, his heart thumps and sputters. And he lets go, a trembling breath wheezing past his lips as he retreats, sees finger-shaped marks across a pale neck.

Lucifer blinks, once, and straightens, shattered bones already healing. "I'm sorry," he says softly, and Sam laughs. It's a choked, broken thing, torn from his throat like a sob.

 _Go to hell_ , he almost says, but the irony of it is enough to keep him from going there.

 

 

Instead of struggling to calm himself enough to have a dreamless sleep, now Sam does everything he can to keep himself awake. He stays up late into the night, reads, listens to music, studies maps, spends hours upon hours in front of his laptop. Life becomes a blur of coffee and energy drinks and endless research, research, research, until he doesn't have enough time to think about resting anymore.

Dean worries. They all worry. In their frustration and their inability to help, they sit back and wait for him to make the mistake, and they worry. Sam wants to cry, or maybe he wants to laugh.

He thinks that maybe, just maybe, saying _yes_ will put an end to this mockery of his life. Maybe, just _maybe_ — but then he stops himself.

 

 

For the second time, Lucifer retreats into a cold, violent sort of silence, cut with burning glares and fingers pressing hard into the exposed patches of Sam's skin when he's sitting close enough to touch. Sam feels as if his veins are clotted with the wreckage of scattered fallen stars, ripped-out wings, dying embers.

Sam watches him. Every small movement, every tilt of the head, every curve of the lips. The faraway gaze and the fire underneath the brittle human skin.

Sam watches, and it feels like now he's the one waiting.

 

 

It happens again. Before he knows it, _God_ , it happens again.

Lucifer's hands are on him, following a worn pattern — shoulders, elbows, wrists. Feather-like, light caresses over rough fabric. Hot, steady breath on the back of his neck. A sinking feeling in his stomach. And Sam _burns_. Sam feels angry, so angry, like he might die from the intensity of it. And, fuck, if Lucifer touches him one more time—

He bolts upright, a sizzling sensation ripping through him, his head pounding with unnamed fervor. Lucifer looks up at him, eyes narrowed, and when the first blow comes, he flinches. With the second, he rears back. And when Sam tries to deliver the third, he reaches up with a too strong hand and catches Sam's wrist in mid-air, something terrifying caught in his eyes.

His vessel's nose is broken open, a dark stream of blood running down over his mouth, jaw line, neck, and Sam feels like the bones of his own wrist are bird-like, like they're going to snap under the weight of Lucifer's borrowed fingers. And then Sam's flying, tearing through hot crackling air, and lands on his back on the cheap mattress with a breathless groan and a thud.

Lucifer is there in a flash, looming above him, heavy limbs and sparking eyes and mouth spouting the most hurtful of words, and Sam feels so awful, so goddamn awful, that at some point stops kicking at the weight pressed on top of him and goes limp, tears streaming down his face and chest heaving like his heart might burst.

"Why—" he chokes out, "What —why —I can't—"

"Sam—" there are fingers closed around both his wrists, pushing them down, holding Sam's arms against the mattress, a pair of blazing eyes looking down at him. "Sam, calm down—"

He coughs, and sees little droplets of blood splattering across Lucifer's face, mingling with Lucifer's own. "I don't— can't—"

" _Sam_!"

Suddenly, he can't move. His arms are pinned down and there's a body on top of his and he forces himself to _breathe, Sammy, breathe_ , blinks against the hot tears, wills his heart to slow down to a bearable rhythm. His head hurts. His chest hurts. Everything fucking _hurts_ , and he feels as if he's standing on the edge of the world with the devil, teetering before the freefall, as if they're waiting to tumble into the abyss.

"Sam."

And he realizes how close they are. They're not fighting each other's violence any longer, easing themselves into the other's forceful grip instead, their breaths trapped in the small, cracked space between their mouths. Both their shirts are riled up, sweaty patches of skin underneath, touching with a fervent sort of softness, and Sam's knee is between Lucifer's legs, pressing up into an unmistakable heat low between their bodies.

A half-open mouth. A soft blow of breath into his lips.

"Sam."

Sam inhales, and his eyes fall closed, back almost arching off the bed—

 

 

He spends an entire day in the backseat of the Impala, staring up into the dark planes of the roof, jaw clenched and gaze forlorn.

"Sammy," Dean is saying desperately, urgently. "Sam, what the hell's wrong with you?"

When he sleeps, he's not alone in the dream. He was not expecting to be. The room is cold and he sits, quiet and still, his whole being heavy with disgust and shame and hatred that is exclusively saved for himself, this time.

Lucifer is silent, and he won't meet Sam's gaze, and Sam is thankful for it.

 

 

The next time, it's Sam who stands, by the window. The sky outside is swathed in diamonds, bright little pinpricks of silver blood embedded into the vast blackness. His throat feels tight, closed, his entire chest thrums with things he does not want to name.

He hears wooden floorboards creak softly under the careful weight of someone slowly making their way towards him. He keeps staring up at the stars beyond the window frame, glittering and beckoning, like sirens beating their dark lashes at him, and he wonders how something dead can be so magnificent.

The near-cautious, unhurried steps come to a halt somewhere beside him, and Sam lets out a long breath. His stomach tightens, his skin burns hot, and he doesn't, he doesn't, he _doesn't_ , he doesn't know what to think, what the right thing to think even is. A large hand cups the side of his neck, fingers resting light against his pulse point, and Sam shudders and panics and lets himself mold into the touch before he can register what he's doing. The hand is warm, and cold, and warm again.

"Sam."

The stars above are blinding, and he wants to die, or maybe he wants to live forever. _Don't_ , he almost says, but it gets stuck behind his teeth, won't come out of his mouth, and he's left trembling with guilt and shame and horror at it all when the fingers are gone and in their place comes a pair of soft lips, brushing against his skin.

His mouth opens and Sam wants it to stop, he wants it so much it hurts, but his feet are nailed to the floor and there's a sound like a whimper-sob caught inside his throat, fighting its way out. "Luc—"

 

 

Sam screams into the night. Sam punches holes through the wall, shatters glass and sobs until Dean holds him so tightly against his chest that his cries fade into quiet, stuttering breaths into his brother's shirt.

"It's okay, Sammy," Dean says, hoarse and choked. His hands shake as he pulls Sam closer. "Sam— you're going to be okay. This is all going to end, he's going to go away, I promise, Sam, I _promise_ —"

"Dean—"

 

 

Sam sleeps, and falls through a glimmering blackness until he lands on his feet in the middle of the motel room that smells of sweat and the remains of a fire and pine-scented freshener. And then there are hands on his shoulders, turning him around, cupping the sides of his face and pulling him forward until he's out of breath and tumbling into the devil's arms.

"No—" he grunts out, but the world seems to be shattering and falling and his fingers are digging into biceps, into collarbone, into chest, and the next sound pulled from his mouth is more moan than sob, more desperation than fear. Lucifer's face is inches from his own, and those old, old eyes are so beautiful and so terrible that Sam has never felt more shattered in his entire life.

Lucifer's mouth is open, lips almost touching Sam's own, breath crackling with the promise of fire finding its way down Sam's throat, and there are hands all over him, searching, pulling, touching, and the sounds filling the air are coming from them both and Sam wants, wants, _wants_ —

He is swallowed in burning heat, and it's so horrible and it's all he's ever imagined it would be and he breathes hard, moans into the stillness of the starlit night, and Lucifer leans forward, leans down, his mouth chasing Sam's. And Sam grunts unintelligible words, and pushes him away.

"I don't— I can't do this, I _can't_."

It hurts so fucking _much_ , and Sam doesn't know what to do, doesn't know how to feel, but he wants, God, he _wants_.

Lucifer takes an almost shaky step back, dark blue gaze ruining Sam, ruining the world around them, and for a moment Sam thinks he can see fire and blood engulfing them. "Sam," Lucifer breathes, like the name is tearing him apart.

 _Wake up_ , Sam shouts into his head, into nothingness. _God, please, wake up, wake up_ —

 

 

Lucifer looks at him with unbearable intensity, as if he's waiting for Sam to smash planets onto his face, to take words out of his lungs and plaster them over his lips. Moonlight bathes them in an otherworldly sort of silver, dances over skin and eyes and mouths, and Sam's head is spinning, his heart threatens to spill over and out of his heaving chest.

Caught by the tide, this is how he feels, suffocating in both water and air, or maybe it's fire, destroying every cell of his body and his sanity in its wake.

Lucifer's fingers tangle in Sam's hair, and he gasps, and all he can see is those eyes, those ancient burning eyes, and lips that part just slightly as Sam lets himself be pulled forward, pulled down. _I can't_ , he screams, a voice made of agony and horror inside him that will not leave his throat. _No, no, no, don't_ , but his own mouth is aching, and he cannot think of anything else, so he leans down until skin touches skin and lips almost touch lips.

"I want," he gasps, a breathless thing. "I want— what is this."

Lucifer's hands are everywhere, in Sam's hair, cupping Sam's cheeks, fisted in Sam's shirt, but then they travel down, down, down, until they rest on the curve of Sam's waist, soft and heavy and so _there_ , and he's looking at Sam like he's never wanted anything else since the beginning of time and it makes Sam want to claw his own eyes out for having seen such a bright, terrible thing, it makes him forget how to breathe.

"This is me and you, Sam," he says in that voice, oh God, that _voice_ , and it sends vibrations through Sam's mouth. "The way we were always meant to be. This is me giving up _everything_ for you, for this."

He swallows, his heart constricts. The heat between them is a blaze and he's letting himself go and he knows there is no coming out of this without being burnt to a cinder. "I won't say yes," he breathes, and the hands on his waist pull him flush against Lucifer's body. "I won't, I won't—"

And then Lucifer's lips are on his own, wind and ice and fire, and Sam opens his mouth under the pressure of it, lets Lucifer's tongue slide against his, makes sounds that he cannot hear under the white hot noise in his ears. It's wet and desperate and it's _everything_ , and Sam clenches his fingers into strands of blond hair, trembles and arches as he hears muffled moans that are not his own. Lucifer's hands reach down between their bodies, chasing away the heat and the need and the _want_ , and Sam sweats and shivers and cries out into the mouth that's kissing him like the world is breaking.

When they part, Sam feels like something inside him has fallen, shattered, gone forever, his heart dancing in his chest. "I won't say yes to the Apocalypse," he says, desperately. "I won't say yes to the end of the world. But you—" he stops, takes a shuddering breath, and Lucifer's fingers close around Sam's wrists. "You—"

"Yes," Lucifer says, and his lips touch Sam's like the glorious, blazing flutter of angel wings. " _Yes_."

 

 

He stands, still as though carved out of glass splinters, eyes closed and heart open. The ocean's spreading out around, an endless expanse of azure blue lapping at the shore. He can feel the sand dissolve between his toes, the wind beat against his skin, and he opens his eyes to stare at the sea, the endless sea.

He watches the waves crashing into each other, twisting and chasing, like dark flaps of shredded skin. If they were red, they'd look just like piles of flesh after a knife has run through them. Sam feels weightless, so weightless, like he might fly if he just spread his arms wide and let the salty air carry him.

He hears a voice like old promises and fire and velvet calling his name, and he wonders if this is a dream. "Sam," and it's everywhere, swallowing him whole. "Sam, Sam, Sam—"

The sea hums, and the sound becomes blurred. There's a hand on his shoulder. He smiles.


End file.
